


An honourable hope

by cormorans



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: F/M, milathos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-03 17:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12151698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cormorans/pseuds/cormorans
Summary: Set during "Trial and Punishment" (2x10) and before the end of it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set during "Trial and Punishment" (2x10) and before the end of it.

HER LODGINGS STOOD a few streets away from his own, from the garrison where he had last seen her and where her words had wormed their way into his mind. Finding the address had been simple enough and the look on her face when she opened the door wasn’t a surprised one. As if she’d expected him. No words were exchanged. Only looks. She stood aside, a silent invitation for him to come inside where the simplicity of the room matched that of her attire, the same clothes she had been wearing hours ago. His own garment was devoid of the gloves, hat and leather coat. The linen shirt he wore was loosely tied, the musket at his waist the only weapon he was carrying. Athos had left his own room in a near daze, the wine untouched. Should he have emptied the bottle? Should he have allowed alcohol to further the effect of her proposal? Should he have found another culprit than that of his own feelings?

The door closed behind him and still, she remained silent. He wondered if it was pride compelling her to do so, to wait for him to speak because it was his turn. Because she’d said too much, perhaps. Slowly, Athos turned to face her, to watch her, to study the eyes he had once trusted with a blindness she’d taken advantage of. She had, hadn’t she?

“I never could imagine you in such surroundings,” he heard himself say.  
How ironic. Such surroundings were nothing if close to her birthright, the very squalor she’d been raised up in and groomed to become something she knew he would have found too repugnant to love. She smiled. A small and bitter twist of her lips.  
“It’s the kind of life you’ve chosen,” she pointed out.  
As true as it was, he didn’t nod. Gazing at her, he took a couple of steps to better his vantage.  
“An honourable life,” came his retort.

It’s all that had remained, all she had left in her wake. And there was nothing she could reply, nothing she could say to counter him then. It surprised him, that absence of denial and mockery, that lack of defiance in her eyes. Looking away, he moved again. Closer to the door this time.  
There was too much to speak of, too much to cover and talk about, too much to mend for the words she’d spoken to slither from his mind into his heart. Or what stood in lieu of it. Remnants of a shell she’d stomped on and trodden over so much that the morsels hadn’t been picked up. What for? The numbness he had sought then maintained with a great amount of wine and fighting was being torn at, pulled apart by every second he allowed to spend in her presence, by every word she breathed, every look he spared her.

“I can’t untangle the lies from the rest.”  
His confession was as weary as his tone. The rest. The truth. What of it? What _was_ it?  
“Or perhaps you don’t want to. Perhaps you’re too frightened.”

From the floor to her face, his sharp gaze was swift to shift.  He had no answer for her. Jaws clenched, he stood there in between her and the door. Teetering. He was teetering. Part of him was hoping that she would deliver the shove, that she would push him over to topple over. To what? To hope? She had spoken of hope. A backward step was taken as soon as she made to walk towards him, her presence near suffocating now. The window was open, a soft breeze gently playing in the strands of hair falling in graceful curls on her shoulders but he refused to look at it - at her - and his faze faltered, returning safely to the side. His feet were moving again. Of their own accord, his body was establishing a distance she was intent on closing; and when the heels of his boots encountered the wall with a dull thud, he forced his gaze to settle on her again. A last barrier, a desperate guard against whatever it was she wanted from him. _And what could it be?_ he silently asked her.  
Over her features, in the lines of her face, perhaps some answer could be deciphered. He had no money, no land, no title. The honour he had clung to, the very honour he had lived by threatened to give in to accommodate the hope she was holding onto. For them. For the both of them. Was there anything to be salvaged? Or would turning her away benefit them, severing the last tie binding them to one another?

Her hand rose. Hesitant, almost afraid, her touch found his chest. If he could believe her capable of such a sentiment now, he would have entertained the idea that she was pleading. Pride was all she had left. Pride and hope. And she had bared herself, stripped the pride to share her hope.  
Another forward step was taken, compelling her to crane her neck to hold his gaze. Athos didn’t remove her hand, nor did he push her way. The air he had been lacking a moment ago was rushing back, invading his lungs, filling his constricted chest upon which her fingers were curling to make a fist in his shirt. He closed his eyes. Defeated, his head leaned in, his shoulders drooped. The feel of her hair gently grazing the side of his face brought forth a whisper.  
“Anne…”


	2. Chapter 2

Their foreheads touched and for what seemed like a long while they both stood like that, lingering between the suffocating presence of the past and the bright prospect of what might be. It seemed as though he intended to kiss her when his face moved just enough to position his mouth over hers, but he didn’t. Lips hovered, parted, breathing in the nearness of her, caught in a state not entirely foreign to the man prone to drink himself to unconsciousness. His eyes blinked open. As they grew accustomed to the light, they settled on the column of her throat where her pulse thrummed underneath the pale and smooth skin forever blemished by the rope. His doing. His undoing.

Athos could feel it again. That old ache. That familiar and excruciating pain in his chest where anger and sorrow congealed under the weight of rationality. That driving need to claw his way back to honour and duty instead of acknowledging that certain tragic events weren’t fit to be subjected to such treatment.

“I thought… I thought I had made my peace with it all,” he said quietly, resignation lacing every laboured word.

“Was it any easier?”

Flicking his head back up, he tensed again.

“Don’t…” he started.

“You brought this on yourself five years ago and you’re doing it all over again now.”

Her words fell on deaf ears. Shoving her aside to stride across the room, he spotted the trunk she had almost filled up in preparation for her departure. Hours. He’d had hours to think about it. Athos wasn’t ready. To give her an answer. To let her go. To come to her - with her. His strides had slowed down, his boots almost scraping over the creaking floorboards, his body cumbersome with the burden of the last five years. Of her proposal. Never had he imagined that she would speak as she had, baring the last remnants of a dignity stripped from her by none other than herself. It humbled him.

The opened window was reached, leaned against. Head tipped back, Athos allowed the most needed fresh air to fill him. It changed very little. If anything, it heightened the ache drumming in his veins. It wouldn't leave him, content to press about him and wring to reduce what remained of the man he once was. In his ears, her words resonated. Could two souls belong to one another? Could they be bound by some almighty and unbreakable force that pain and hatred couldn’t destroy? Her confession, her adamant reiteration of what took place years ago sickened him for it brought along the pungent taste of his own failure. It swelled inside of him, curdled, turned rancid and infected his bloodstream.

“If this all true...” he began, voicing aloud the dark meandres of his musings.

“Then it’s your beloved _honour_ you hanged that day,” she finished.

Around the rotting wood of the windowsill, his fingers squeezed tighter yet, his eyes closed, his entire body taut with the overwhelming desire to throw himself over. Or into her arms. Was there a difference anymore? The last five years couldn’t have been a lie. Still, he clung to it, held on to what he had been living by from the moment he’d lain eyes on his brother’s blood staining hands he’d touched, a dress he had chosen.

He could feel her behind him, her presence a taunting bait meant to entice him into giving credence to the falsehood of it all. His life, his choices, his decision. Believing that she had beguiled her way into his life, entreated to better deceive, was the beginning and end of it all. Had he been too hasty to tarnish her? To give in to ration and honour to guard and preserve what remained of the shell of a man she’d brought about with the single thrust of a blade into brotherly flesh? The better part of him had died that day, buried along with a life he didn’t wish to remember.

“The past is dead,” Athos murmured.

Slowly, his grip loosened. He turned around.  
“The future isn’t,” she replied.

For the second time, she had moved closer. Didn’t she tire of chasing the phantom of his former self? Her resilience was disarming. There was no demand, no conceited request, no deceitful cause woven in the words she spoke, concealed in her eyes, and it occurred to Athos then, that he would never know peace until either of them atoned. Grieving what had been with pressed blue flowers, drowning what could have been in wine would never amount to redemption. In his ribs, the painful throb had gained in strength, its rhythmic manifestation constricting his chest.

His mouth opened to release words that died on his tongue the moment their eyes locked.

Before she could move, the distance between them was closed and he was on her. Lips a had crushing press against hers, hands a firm wrap around her waist. It was relentless, filled with an urgency he didn’t want to contain any longer, frantic with the need to feel something that wasn’t the numb and hollow despair she had shared. “Anne,” he whispered, her name a stifled plead in between their lips. He pulled on the laces of her dress, his fingers almost trembling when her own matched the impetuous desire given free reign and pushed through his hair, yanked on it, gripped the sleeves of his shirt to tighten their embrace. The table he had pushed her against groaned under the sudden collision of their conjoined bodies but he felt her hand reach out to blindly shove it aside and he carried on walking until the small bed standing in the corner was encountered.


End file.
